Abercrombie & Fitch loses ruling over Muslim garb

Bob Egelko |
September 9, 2013
| Updated: September 10, 2013 7:29am

In this Oct. 6, 2009 photo, an Abercrombie & Fitch shopper walks along a sidewalk in downtown Seattle. A late Labor Day and delayed school openings offered some relief to merchants in September, helping to boost sales above Wall Street expectations. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

In this Thursday, March 28, 2013, photo, a woman works at an Abercrombie & Fitch store in Chicago. The government reports how much consumers spent and earned in March on Monday, April 29, 2013. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

Abercrombie & Fitch is known for using sex to sell its teen and kids clothing lines. This image of a topless girl hugging a bare-chested boy was one of the tamer photos in the 2003 Christmas catalog that was pulled from stores. Another photo depicted teenage group sex.

Filipino women pose for photographs with topless male models outside the soon to open Abercrombie & Fitch flagship clothing store in Hong Kong on August 5, 2012. The store is due to be opened for trading on August 11. AFP PHOTO / LAURENT FIEVETLAURENT FIEVET/AFP/GettyImages

Security (R) and staff members stand on the opening day at the entrance of the US clothing Abercrombie & Fitch store on the Champs-Elysees avenue in Paris on May 19, 2011. More than one hundred million people frequent each year this famous avenue, the 5th world more expensive one. AFP PHOTO LIONEL BONAVENTURE (Photo credit should read LIONEL BONAVENTURE/AFP/Getty Images)

Photo By Brant Ward/The Chronicle

A huge portrait at Abercrombie and Fitch on Market Street dwarfed a homeless woman. A San Francisco Chamber of Commerce report says that San Franciscans are beginning to come out of their doldrums about life and the economy, but the report says more people are pessimistic about the homeless problem here.

Photo By Wong Maye-E/AP

Shoppers walk past a billboard for a soon-to-be opened Abercrombie and Fitch store outside a shopping mall on Thursday Aug. 18, 2011 in Singapore. The city-state's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong warned Singaporeans in his recent national day address that economic problems in the U.S. and Europe pose a serious risk to world growth which could lead to another recession. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

Photo By Richard Hertzler/Associated Press

A young shopper holds an Abercrombie and Fitch shopping bag at the Park City mall in Lancaster, Pa. on Black Friday, Nov. 25, 2011. Early signs point to bigger crowds at the nation's malls and stores as retailers like Macy's and Target opened their doors at midnight.

Abercrombie & Fitch and its Hollister Co. outlet in San Mateo violated the religious rights of a Muslim employee who was fired for refusing to remove her headscarf, a federal judge has ruled.

The clothing retailer failed to prove it would suffer undue hardship by accommodating the beliefs of Hani Khan, who wore the hijab mandated by her faith for four months at the store in the Hillsdale Shopping Center before she was fired in February 2010, said U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers.

She said Abercrombie & Fitch, while maintaining a mandatory dress and grooming code for employees, has granted exemptions since 2005 that have allowed male employees to wear a Jewish yarmulke, a baseball cap and facial hair, a female employee to wear a jeweled cross, and more than 16 other women to wear hijabs.

Khan worked mostly in the store's stockrooms, preparing clothes for display, but occasionally entered public areas to place and remove products. The company produced no evidence of "complaints, disruption, or a noticeable effect on sales" because of her attire, Gonzalez Rogers said in her Sept. 3 ruling, which allows Khan to ask a jury for damages.

"At the heart of this case is the belief that no one should ever have to choose between their religion and their work," Zahra Billoo, Bay Area executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Monday. The organization represented Khan along with the San Francisco Legal Aid Society's Employment Law Center.

In a statement, the company said, "Abercrombie & Fitch does not discriminate based on religion and we grant religious accommodations when reasonable."

The company declined to comment on the ruling, which it could appeal.

Abercrombie's "Look" policy required employees to wear clothes similar to those sold at its stores and bans headwear. But the judge said Khan wore a hijab to her job interview and was allowed to keep wearing it - as long as it matched company colors - until the company's district manager spotted her four months later and contacted the local human resources director.

Khan was immediately suspended with pay, and was fired 11 days later.

Abercrombie & Fitch says it has since changed its policy and allows Muslim women to wear headscarves. But Gonzalez Rogers noted the change came after the lawsuit and said Khan, joined by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, could seek an injunction requiring the accommodation.